Why Do Chinese Trade Unions Set Up And Have Long-Term Existence?

With the development of a socialist market economy with Chinese characteristics,the market-oriented transformation of labor relations has been further deepened,and the contradiction between labor and capital has also been continuously highlighted.Many scholars and people believe that the establishment of trade unions in Chinese enterprises is mainly driven by laws and policies.In addition to maintaining staff stability and bringing some minor benefits to employees,it does not have a substantial effect on the protection of employees' labor rights and interests.In fact,not only state-owned enterprises set up trade unions,but also the enthusiasm of private enterprises to form trade unions is high,and the scale of the trade unions has been constantly expanding.Corporate unions seem to have more functions,and merely using policy factors can not fully explain the reasons for the establishment and development of trade unions.Then,why did the Chinese trade unions set up and existed for a long time?This is the question that this article needs to answer.Therefore,this paper collects and sorts out relevant existing literature,systematically describes the development and differentiation of trade union theories in China and the West,and conducts in-depth historical analysis of the causes of the formation and development of trade unions in the United States,Japan,Russia,and other western countries.It also made an objective comparison with the history of the establishment and development of Chinese trade unions.The study finds that the traditional western trade union theories do not correspond to the growing environment of the Chinese trade unions,and some of the existing trade union theories in China exaggerated the political attributes of Chinese enterprise trade unions.Therefore,this paper proposes the theoretical hypothesis of "market failure + organizational failure".In an attempt to explain the reasons for the establishment of trade unions in Chinese enterprises,it seeks to restore the essence of the market failure of Chinese trade unions and Western union trade unions,and it also highlights the characteristics of the emergence of government management for effective resolution of organizational failures by Chinese trade unions.Further,in order to explain the reasons for the long-standing existence of Chinese corporate labor unions,this article has comprehensively sorted out the research results of the trade unions on companies and employees in the existing domestic and foreign literature,and thus puts forward another hypothesis,that is,the role of trade unions for companies and employees is their long-term reality.Based on the analysis of existing research results and the formulation of theoretical assumptions,this paper uses empirical data from the "Chinese Employer-Employee Survey(CEES)" based on strict stratified random sampling and field surveys to empirically test theoretical hypotheses.The empirical results show that the scale of enterprise employment,the size of capital,the firm age,political connections and the identity of entrepreneurs are important factors affecting the establishment of trade unions in Chinese enterprises.Further empirical analysis found that trade unions have certain positive effects on the improvement of business operations and management.The existence of trade unions in Chinese enterprises has significantly improved the total factor productivity and the management efficiency of enterprises,and it has a significant inhibitory effect on the turnover rate of enterprises.In addition,labor unions also have a positive effect on raising employees' wages and benefits.The trade union helps to raise the salary level of employees,increase the possibility of employee's labor contract signing,increase the possibility of employees' full access to the insurance benefits,and increase employees' job satisfaction.Through further discussion of the empirical results,this paper validates the previous assumption that the establishment of a Chinese enterprise union is the result of a combination of market failures and organizational failures;it can not only bring improvements to companies in certain areas,but also help improve employees' level of wages and benefits,combined with the effective promotion of government departments,thus it has room for further survival and development.Therefore,the policy inspirations proposed in this paper are:to improve relevant laws and regulations and to strengthen trade union legislative protection;to reduce government administrative intervention and to enhance the independent status of trade unions;to rely on actual national conditions in the country to boost the functioning of trade unions;to increase employee awareness of rights protection and 'enhance employee participation.